Mamie Stewart Yellowtail invites us into her Montana kitchen for some cowboy-worthy cooking and Crow hospitality.
An old grain elevator grabs your attention when you enter the Crow Reservation in Wyola, Montana. Ten miles from the Wyoming border, it’s a small town, once known for being a main shipping point for cattle. For the 200-some folks who live here, it’s a good place for a ranching family to homestead. I’m here to meet Mamie Stewart Yellowtail for a get-to-know-you photo shoot and to be fed by “Crow Cookin’ Woman.”
The smell of pan bread comes wafting through the air when the screen door opens at Yellowtail’s home. Hands dusted in flour and standing there in a fire-engine red apron that reads Move Over Martha, she greets me with a welcoming smile and ushers me in.
In her favorite “Move Over, Martha” apron, Yellowtail prepares dessert in enviable crockery bowls.
First things first. She heads straight to the kitchen and bids me to follow. “It brings peace to cook,” Yellowtail says. “It’s my happy place, and my stove is my diamond.” There are bowls of all shapes and sizes and a pantry full of ingredients — including every single spice Costco sells — that would make a professional chef envious. Her cabinets are charred from a grease fire the night before; telling me about it, she laughs at herself and continues cooking while counting all of her blessings one by one out loud and dancing around the kitchen to “The Oogum Boogum Song” playing on the radio.
Yellowtail pulls the golden-brown pan bread from the electric skillet and insists that the secret to the recipe comes from the contents of the corrugated tin can sitting on her cluttered countertop: a dollop of recycled lard. In a separate pan, she has prepared a thick white hamburger gravy that will be poured over the pan bread. For dessert, glazed cinnamon coffee bars. Crow hospitality at its finest.
When the meal is served, Yellowtail’s husband, Cork, takes his seat at the head of their farm table. Prayers are said and everyone digs in. Then come the stories. How she worked for Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service for four years out of high school. How she and Cork met and fell in love in the mountains.
“You’ve been married 40 years. Is good cooking the secret to a lasting marriage?” I ask. “I’d like to think it’s my looks!” Yellowtail exclaims, breaking out into laughter.
Mamie Stewart Yellowtail with husband Carson and daughter Isabella.
They had their daughter, Isabella, when Yellowtail was 44. Her daughter is pictured with her on her Instagram page, where @crow_mountainwoman describes herself as “Christian Crow Indian woman — truly off the beaten path, self-taught cook. If you can read, you can cook. Ranch living — pure & clean.”
She doesn’t just have a passion for cooking, she loves to talk about food and how the preparation of meals and the memories made around the table have played a major role in their ranching operation. Yellowtail served as the camp cook for years — she was the first to rise and the last to bed. They would winter the cattle in the Garvin Basin, trail them to the top of Big Bullelk for the summer, then trail them 32 miles to the home place on the head of Lodge Grass Creek at the foot of the Bighorn Mountains. Once the calves were weaned, they’d trail the cows back to Garvin Basin, which they continue to lease — all 62,000 acres — from the Crow Tribe.
Cork recalls the harsh conditions. Modern conveniences weren’t readily available. Cooking was done out of a wall tent, back of a truck, or on a sheep wagon. Malleable stoves were utilized. Spring water was collected in buckets. There wasn’t any refrigeration, so canned and dried goods were staples. Meals had to be prepared for their cattle crew three times a day during the drive. Cowboys would ride and grab a plate of food without ever getting off of their horses. The days were long and hard, and the meals needed to stick to your ribs. “She always fed a crew and done it well,” Cork says.
Has she ever tired of cooking, I ask. “No,” Yellowtail says. “Cooking brings me joy.”
[1] Yellowtail’s handwritten recipe for Cinnamon Coffee Bars. [2] Tools of her ranch-cook trade—Yellowtail’s cutting board and cookware. [3] Pan bread rolled, tossed, and ready to fry. [4] A basket of finished fried pan bread.
Her days are filled now with frequent trips to check the cattle with Cork. And she spends quality time with her daughter, who is going to college and is involved in rodeo. As for cooking, Yellowtail provides meals for a group of widowed men and for different church events. And she enjoys competing in the annual Dayton School Benefit Club Chili Cook-Off, where she’s been named champion two years in a row.
If the kitchen is her happy place, the summer camp is Yellowtail’s contented spot. After lunch, we take a 45-minute jaunt up a dirt road to that home away from home. We pull up near where some lodgepoles are leaning against the trees. In the near distance, there are shepherd’s wagons; farther off, Black Angus are grazing. It’s a restful, contemplative place, and Yellowtail has a meditative moment. “First and foremost,” she says, “I want to recognize the love of my Savior, family, and friends.”
Quickly enough, the conversation turns back to food, and she leaves me with a final tip and anecdote, blissfully recalling how she once repeated a Julia Child quote at a church event. “Don’t be afraid of the chicken — it’s already dead!”
Yellowtail’s memory lane of sentimental items displayed in an old wooden hutch at her home on the Crow Reservation.
Adopted by the Crow, Erika Haight has been documenting the tribe for more than 15 years and is collecting images and stories for a book.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Erika Haight
From our October 2024 issue.
